Pick Up Your Cross – Mar. 3, 2023
“It took me quite awhile—years, actually—to realize that Jesus is not inviting me to be crucified. I’m just volunteering to pick up my cross and carry it. Maybe not with grace or even steadiness, moving ahead under its weight. And it’s my cross, not the cross Jesus was compelled to bear… I suspect that in […]
Do More, Be More, Have More
Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted there. Right after his glorious confirmation, right after being assured of his place and purpose—“This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased”—Jesus faces the wilderness. Great assurance, followed by great difficulty. Is it possible we heard wrong our calling? […]
Underneath
Beneath the feet of the monks, that which holds them and their houses of prayer, is this land. Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery on the coast of South Carolina, is where we’re on retreat. The land of my childhood. Beneath the years of their prayerful songs, as old as my dad, there is that which will outlast […]
Saboteurs – Jan. 26, 2023
“We need a foil, an enemy, an external embodiment of the part of us that is limiting our growth on the path. With a raging saboteur in our lives, tromping all over our neediest, limiting parts, we can no longer deny our self-limiting tendencies. With an external force causing the pain, we eventually recognize the […]
